


the blue glass

by zetaophiuchi (ryuujitsu)



Series: t'es beau [2]
Category: SKAM (France), SKAM (TV) RPF
Genre: Angst, Cheating, Drama, Hand Jobs, M/M, Pining, RPF, maxel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 13:47:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20009281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryuujitsu/pseuds/zetaophiuchi
Summary: At his mother’s, he can’t eat; he shreds bits of chicken between his fingers and feeds them to Ouba beneath the table.“You’re quiet,chéri,” his mother says. “Is something wrong?”“Just tired,” he says, “it’s a lot of travel, shuttling back and forth like this,” and then he sets down his fork and says, “Maman, I think…I think Maxence is in love with me.”Companion fic tot'es beau.





	the blue glass

**Author's Note:**

> [FLWhite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite), [witheredsong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/witheredsong/pseuds/witheredsong), this is your fault.

_Ah, honey_  
_I saw the future there in the blue glass_  
_You and me together in the green grass_

—The Lonely Biscuits, “[The Blue Glass](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjLNtnnTpnY)” 

Somewhere between Biarritz and Calvi, Maxence Danet Fauvel throws himself into the Mediterranean. He curls up gently around his knees and plunges soundlessly into deep blue water.

Axel’s watched the video at least seven times, maybe ten. Maybe more. He’s watched all the other Instagram stories before that, too, the ones of Maxence flopping across an inflatable mattress in the middle of a field, of Maxence bouncing around in a neon green wig, Maxence licking a street sign at four in the morning, Maxence grinning at the voice of J.F. Grimaud, who was invisible and laughing behind the camera.

It unsettled him, the cliff jump. He isn’t sure why. He’s not a daredevil, but he’s not soft, either; you can’t be soft, scootering around Paris. All the same, he watched the jump again and again, as though to desensitize himself, hissing between his teeth.

And now, as though someone plucked him from the screen mid-air and dropped him into Axel’s reality, here’s Maxence, back from the festival circuit, back in Paris for just a little while.

Against the sterile backdrop of France TV headquarters, he’s just as golden as he was on camera and equally un-serene. He’s giggling wildly as he bends and pretends to dive into the water.

“But no,” Coline is saying, “but no, you idiot, that’s how you break your neck.”

“But Coline, it was very deep,” Maxence says.

“But the rocks!”

He’s barely glanced at Axel this entire time. They smiled at each other once across the table as lunch was served, a private joke at David’s expense. Axel raised both eyebrows as if to say, _Can you believe he just said that?_ And Maxence seemed to shrug his shoulders.

Coline is still exclaiming about rocks. Maxence doubles over. He puts his hand on Coline’s shoulder, squeezes.

Axel checks his phone without really looking; he wants a pretext, an excuse. He even gives a convincing little jump, as though he’s only just noticing the time. They don’t need him anymore, anyway; it’s all Robin’s show now.

Coline waves as he goes. Maxence doesn’t even turn.

 _Where to?_ Axel asks himself, hesitating over the call button. The sun is sparkling on the tile, turning red on the edges of the false potted tree in the window. The whole afternoon is ahead. He feels disappointed, strangely breathless, almost hollow: he inhales as deeply as he can to fill himself up, swelling his lungs.

He’ll be early to dinner with his mother, he decides; he’ll take Ouba for a walk. It’ll be hot, they’ll have to stop by the fountain in the park…

Maxence appears beside him in the elevator bank, as abruptly as Eliott by the vending machine. He’s a little stooped, his hands in his pockets.

“Oh,” he says, surprised, and Maxence smiles at him.

The elevator arrives: a smooth upward motion crowned by a bright chime. Axel has the distinct sensation of things sliding into place. Through the glass of the elevator, the sky is brassy and blue. He starts to ask Maxence about his summer.

“Can we talk?” Maxence asks, as they reach the lobby. “Catch up, I mean.”

“Now?”

He doesn’t want to sound too eager; he glances at the street like he’s taking a moment to think about it. A strange pleasure overtakes him; he bites his lip to keep from grinning.

“My place,” Maxence suggests. “How about it?”

His lip slides between his teeth as the grin breaks free.

“Sure,” he says. “Lead the way.”

Twenty minutes later, he’s thinking frantically back to the gathering at France TV, the luncheon, ransacking his memory. They had a glass of wine each, that was all. Maxence was sober, clear-eyed. He’d been giddy with Coline, but he was always like that at ensemble meetings, excitable, like a large and exuberant dog.

There were no warning signs, he thinks, none whatsoever: nothing that would have told him that the moment Maxence’s apartment door closed, Maxence would throw him against it and begin to maul him.

No warning signs save the entire third season, he corrects himself, but it’s already too late: he’s flat on his back and Maxence’s hand is on him, _tight_ , and Maxence is speaking to him, in a ragged, irresistible murmur that saturates the air like perfume or honey or rain, and suddenly he can’t seem to think at all.

When he opens his eyes, Maxence is gazing down at him, bright-eyed and flushed. He looks like a vision, like a Madonna in a museum, ornately framed, or a beautiful sculpture against a backdrop of yellow irises: the composer’s angel by the church of St. Clotilde, leaning over him with a smile, rosy and indistinct in the gold of the afternoon.

“You’re beautiful,” Maxence says to him, Axel, with his red cheeks and drooling mouth and unfocused eyes, and Axel wants to laugh in his face, but he can’t find the words to protest or even joke.

All he knows is that it feels unfair to leave Maxence hanging, and that he doesn’t want to be unfair, and that it’s very hard to undo someone’s belt at this angle. He’s never done that before, he thinks, tugged at a man’s belt and pulled it open.

Maxence says his name like he’s trying not to, half-swallowed, the softest of sounds. Axel touches him, cups him in his hand and feels him, firm and hot beneath the silken slide of his underwear.

He’s never done this before, either, he thinks, held another man like this, though he has felt Maxence pressed tight against him, rolling around on a bed in front of the crew, all of them swallowing back their words, too, maybe holding their breaths. It wasn’t like this then, not nearly so urgent. Maxence had been looking at him as Eliott, sweet and fond; his leg between Axel’s legs had been gentle and sinuous and dry, practically powdered. It had been different even when they were doused in paint, slippery with it; he’d been kissing Eliott then. But now—

Now Maxence is sweating, now he’s hard and heavy in Axel’s hand, and wet, too, slopping against Axel’s palm. There are no constraints: of clothing, of time, of hanging cameras, of twenty pairs of eyes on his naked shoulders, and Maxence is beneath Axel, beneath his fingers, all of him, open to him like a sunbather to the sky.

He feels like an explorer in a space helmet surveying an alien landscape—a smooth tawny expanse, the intricate patterns of moles echoing in his mind the dazzling bursts of infinite stars overhead. Years of training and study have prepared him for this mission, the exploration must be long and deep and thorough, scientific, but all the while he’s keenly aware that he’s running out of oxygen. And floating through his brain is another thought: if he takes another step forward, it could be his last; there will be no turning back.

“Please,” Maxence says, thin and strained, “please, please, _please_ , God, don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

Farewell, Axel thinks, farewell, Earth, and normalcy, and everything that has come before. It’s a new world now, all his; there’s no one in it but himself and Maxence and this bed.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll take care of you.”

He tightens his grip, and Maxence seems to like it; he gasps and thrashes and stares at Axel, his mouth dropping open. Then he squeezes his eyes shut and moans.

Axel has monologued before, soliloquized on stage, striding back and forth, but he’s at a loss now. He can’t match Maxence’s narration of filth. All he can do is keep moving his hand, fascinated by the ripple of Maxence beneath it, the tightening of his body, the tautness of his fingers as they dig into the covers, the sharp glint of light on his chin as he throws his head back and pants. The desperate little movements of his hips and the spreading of his legs, as though he wants more than just Axel’s fist.

All he has to do is crawl forward, Axel thinks, just a few centimeters, and Maxence will cry out and rub against him and try to take what he needs. He finds himself wishing it were that easy, that he could lean forward and sink into Maxence and make him happy, feel Maxence’s legs wrapping around him, Maxence’s hands clenching in his hair, urging him on.

“Axel,” Maxence gasps.

He freezes, wondering if he’s squeezed too hard, and then he gasps, too, as Maxence rears up and groans and comes across his own stomach and chest in twitching bursts.

He pulls his hand away and holds it curled in his lap, unsure what to do; it would be rude to wipe his palm on the sheets, surely, and ruder still to smear his hand across Maxence’s thigh. So he keeps it there between his legs, palm up, tingling and damp.

Maxence lets out a low, cracked chuckle.

“That was fast,” he says, and his teeth flash into a smile as he covers his eyes with both hands. “I’m embarrassed,” he says. “Don’t look at me.”

Axel looks; of course he looks: looks and looks and looks, at the pink flush on Maxence’s skin, the gleam of wetness across his stomach as he bends his knees and hides himself and curls up on his side. Was it fast? he thinks. The sun pouring in through the curtain shocks him. He can still feel the heat of Maxence in his palm.

“You were pent up, maybe,” he croaks.

“Pent up,” Maxence repeats; he’s still grinning as he lifts his hands.

“Glad I could—” Maxence is looking at him through his lashes, looking at him and beaming, God! “—glad I could be of service.”

“Mm, I’m grateful,” Maxence says. He hauls Axel into his arms.

His brain flies through a catalogue of idiotic remarks. _You_ should _be grateful, I don’t do that for just anyone. Shall we go again? Then you can be doubly grateful._

“I love you,” Maxence says.

He opens his mouth, stiffens.

He can feel the sticky press of Maxence’s chest against his shoulder blades, the heat of his thighs, his breath, the softness of Maxence’s lips against his ear.

He realizes that all of this has happened, that even in this misty golden light of late afternoon, he can see the dust in the air and the flaking paint on the walls and hear the traffic outside, that they are alone; that no one is here to save him by shouting, _Cut_!

He realizes also that this silence is poison, that if he waits long enough, it won’t matter what he says. But he has to say it carefully.

“Ah,” Maxence says, “fuck, sorry.”

“Maxence—”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Maxence murmurs. “Don’t, in fact. Don’t worry about it. Sorry, I shouldn’t have,” he says, and then his voice trails away; he’s asleep.

He turns the words over and over in his head as he wipes himself off, pulls his shirt back down, tugs his pants up. _I love you. I love you._ He takes it seriously, a declaration of this kind, has only said it to Charlie on momentous occasions, over a red bouquet, over a candlelit dinner, but Maxence has blurted it out just like that, soft and sleepy and empty-handed, and they’ve barely known each other a year. It feels irreverent, almost insulting.

He looks at Maxence’s face, smoothed in sleep, mouth parted. He watches the glitter of sweat drying across Maxence’s eyelids. The light loves him; his skin is glowing.

He’d be a liar if he said he’d never thought about it before, about taking Maxence into his arms and going further than they were ever allowed to go on set. He’d thought it would be sweet, fun, funny, even; they’d laugh as they discovered each other. He’d imagined that Maxence would kick him out afterward, amiably, push him from the bed, grin at him, send him on his way. And that would be that: an itch scratched, curiosity satisfied. A casual question, asked and answered. No big deal. No need to do it again.

Now he knows differently—knows the weight of Maxence, the velvet feel of him, the way he began to gasp toward the end, the hoarseness of his voice and how it curled like smoke into Axel’s ears and set him on fire.

_I love you._

They’ve practiced, he supposes. They’ve said it to each other back and forth across a table, on set, standing on the pavement before a fake bus stop. Maybe it just slipped out. Maybe it was Eliott talking; maybe, like Lucas, he was supposed to smile and say, _Me, too_. A missed cue.

Maxence shifts. His eyelids flutter.

He turns hastily to the door, rubs the sheets between his fingers, bites his lip, waits.

As soon as Maxence says his name, he knows: it wasn’t an accident; it wasn’t a whim. He can hear it in Maxence’s voice, the nervousness and the tension, as Maxence cuts through his stammering and tells him to go.

“It’s okay,” Maxence says, but he knows it isn’t.

He shuts the door quietly, as though Maxence is still asleep.

Afterward, he stands on the sidewalk as the day tilts into dusk and watches the people of Paris going about their perfectly normal lives, happy, ignorant, with no inkling that he, Axel, is standing on the ceiling, that with a hand on his cock and two little words Maxence has taken his world and turned it upside-down.

He wants to go back in time, go back an hour, even ten minutes.

I should have kissed him, he thinks, I should have occupied his mouth, I shouldn’t have let him speak at all.

He imagines Maxence somewhere above him. Maybe Maxence has pulled on a pair of sweatpants and climbed the stairs and is now watching him from the rooftop.

His ears burn. He hurries to the metro, down into the humid darkness.

At his mother’s, he can’t eat; he shreds bits of chicken between his fingers and feeds them to Ouba beneath the table.

“You’re quiet, _chéri_ ,” his mother says. “Is something wrong?”

“Just tired,” he says, “it’s a lot of travel, shuttling back and forth like this,” and then he sets down his fork and says, “ _Maman_ , I think…I think Maxence is in love with me.”

The words hang in front of him. He imagines them succumbing to gravity, hitting his plate one by one: plink, plink. He can’t take them back now, he thinks; he can’t pick them up and swallow them away. He doesn't really want to, either.

He can feel his mother’s eyes on him, her silence. Ouba licks his fingertips.

“That’s all,” he says. “Are you surprised?”

“Not at all, no,” she says. “But what about Charlie?”

“What do you mean, what about Charlie?”

“Does she know?”

“Why would she…why should I…”

His mother’s gaze drops pointedly to his throat, and he doesn’t have to get up to look in a mirror, he doesn’t even have to wonder: he knows there must be a mark, a red aureole around his mole, peeping out beneath the rumpled edge of his collar. He thought he was going to come then and there when Maxence sucked on it, that he was going to die, that gray matter would trickle from his ears.

“I,” he stammers. “I wasn’t thinking, I made a mistake.”

“You have to treat people the way you want to be treated,” his mother says sternly. “Okay, Axel? That’s all I’ll say about it.”

But later, as he finishes rinsing the dishes, she joins him in the kitchen and pats his cheek the way she used to when he was little.

The gesture is small and infinitely tender. Tears spring to his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t want you to think badly of me.”

She embraces him. “I love you,” she says. “Whatever you decide. I know you’ll do the right thing.”

He falls asleep expecting to feel better in the morning, but on waking he feels it, the clench of anxiety in his stomach. He walks with Ouba, eats a mouthful of breakfast, kisses his mother goodbye.

He goes for a stroll with Charlie after dark, when he’s less likely to be recognized, sweating under the high collar of his button-down shirt. They find a sound stage by the Canal de l'Ourcq and sway side by side.

He’d post something about it normally, a video or a picture, but he doesn’t take any this time, not even for himself. They made their plans late in the day, and he’d hoped the sight of her would be clarifying in some way, that he would take her hand in his and feel either reverent or repulsed, and that would be his answer, but he feels nothing: the evening is pleasant and unremarkable. When Charlie dances he only has eyes for her, and when they walk arm in arm along the water, he looks up at the lights in the windows of Paris and wonders what Maxence is doing.

He meets David a few days later to talk over some details of the coming seasons, six and seven—especially seven. There is melodrama planned, David tells him, tears and shouting. A manic episode triggered by the stress of change.

“Of course I invited Maxence to be here as well, to discuss,” David tells him, and his heart lurches and he half-turns in his seat, expecting Maxence to be standing behind him, “but we can do that another time.”

“About Maxence,” he says, and stops, and starts again, and stops again.

“Yes?” David says.

“If, say, he and I were to…if we were to…”

David nods encouragingly.

“If we were…together,” he says, feeling sick. He runs his hand over the printout where Niels has typed out a whole catalogue of sadistic ideas: hospitalization, infidelity. “Would that be a problem?”

When he looks up, David is smiling at him.

“Axel,” David says, “what you do in your private life is no concern of mine. Did I tell Marilyn and Michel they couldn’t be together? Of course not. Of course not. I donned my little Cupid’s wings, in fact.” He mimes the release of a tiny arrow. “I know already your commitment, your love for Lucas. I know you’ll be careful. Your professionalism is not in question. If it’s my blessing you need, then you have it, with all my heart. You can tell Maxence that too.”

As though Maxence is waiting for him at home, biting his nails, pacing back and forth as he waits for the text, the all clear: _David says it’s okay._

“No, no, no,” he says. “No, I was just…I mean…we aren’t, though. Together.”

David stares at him. “Oh, dear,” he says. “I’ve put my foot in my mouth. I see. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“No, I should have been more clear, I…”

David says, “It happens all the time, you know…people fall in love on set, they become their characters. And you two especially, you inhabit your characters. If we hadn’t been renewed, I’d say…” He stops, finds his glass of water, and sips. “No. No, I can’t tell you what to do one way or the other, _mon petit_. Just take it slow, that’s my advice to you. And if things become uncomfortable, tell me. We’ll find a way to make it work. Life happens,” he says. “Life always happens. And we adapt. We’re in the business, we know how to adapt. You’re my stars, both of you. We’ll make it work.”

The meeting fizzles after that; Axel is blushing, he can tell, and David keeps setting the script aside to offer hearty reassurances.

“I feel responsible, you see,” he says, as he escorts Axel to the door, “I brought you two together, after all.”

He starts to text Maxence about it in the metro— _Guess what, David thought we were already dating_ — _Guess what, David’s cast himself as Cupid!_ —then thinks better of it. He asked Maxence for time, and Maxence is giving it to him, and he should take what he is given and think—really think—about what he wants.

No matter how he tries to examine the problem, he keeps circling back to those words. _I love you._ Maybe Maxence _was_ drunk, he thinks. Maybe he was stoned. Maybe he got caught up in the moment, in post-orgasmic euphoria, said something he didn’t mean.

He tries to read and finds himself daydreaming instead, about that afternoon in the golden quiet of Maxence’s room, about the softness of Maxence’s mouth on his, the taste of him. He can’t look anyone in the eye anymore, not Charlie, not his mother. An email from David and Niels goes unopened. He keeps his phone on silent or forgets it at home, and his voicemails pile up.

Eventually, he makes himself go through them, deleting or addressing them one by one. There are two from David, and one from his mother, and all the rest are from his agent, about interview requests, upcoming projects. _You’re in demand_ , she says. He hacks his way to the present. Delete, save, delete.

“Axellll,” Maxence says, and his heart flings itself into his throat and falls down again, quivering. “I,” Maxence says, and then he exclaims in wordless protest. _You’ll thank me_ , another voice says, deep and amused, _in the_ —

“End of final message,” his phone says. “You have no new—”

“Fuck,” he says.

He plays the message over and over, as many times as he can stand it. _Axel_ , Maxence says, _Axel, Axel, I, Axel, I—_

 _I_ what, part of him cries, and he wonders where Maxence is, what festival, who took the phone from him, whose voice was so knowing and gentle in the background. But Maxence’s Instagram still shows him sitting happily atop a hay bale in Calvi.

He finds Maxence in his contacts. He stares at the picture of Eliott saved there, tousle-haired and beaming: the face of a stranger.

Sleep on it, he tells himself. Wait a day.

He hits _Call_.

For a moment he thinks he’ll be ferried straight to voicemail. Then—

“Hello?”

He shivers at the sound of Maxence’s voice, sleep-rough and slow.

“Hi,” he says, tentative. “Are you free today? Can we meet?”

“I’m in Senlis,” Maxence says.

He can feel the sweat trapped between his cheek and the screen. Maxence doesn’t sound happy to hear from him; he’s rambling on about his sister now. _Senlis,_ he thinks. _Your sister,_ he thinks. I _thought you said you loved me._

“When you’re back, then.”

“I don’t know when that’ll be,” Maxence says.

There’s a finality to his tone, like an iron gate swinging shut, a rigidity that suggests he’s planning to spend the rest of his life there, Axel be damned.

“Please,” Axel says. He misses Maxence’s smile. Suddenly, he’s turned on; he wants to be touched. He presses his fingertips into his forearm as hard as he can. “I don’t want to do this over the phone.”

“Monday,” Maxence says, after a pause.

“Monday,” Axel repeats, “okay, I’ll text you,” but Maxence has already hung up.

Afterward, it’s agony: he paces around his room like an angry cat; he digs his fingernails into his palms, runs his hands through his hair, rolls around on his bed. He looks up tickets to Senlis. He could be there in two hours, he thinks, and then he stands paralyzed in the corner by his bookshelf and tells himself not to be an idiot. He doesn’t know where Maxence is staying. He doesn’t know anything.

The rest of the week passes slowly. He regrets booking this holiday, these few weeks off. He wishes he could launch himself headlong into the performances and photoshoots, all scheduled to start at the end of the month. Anything to stop thinking. He has a long conversation with Charlie on Friday, two hours and thirty-six minutes according to his phone. She's in Ibiza with her family, and there's a swimming pool, and that's all he remembers.

"Is something wrong?" she asks, when the silence has stretched on too long. "Axel?"

It takes him a minute to answer. He blames the connection. He blames the heat. He says hello to her parents, guiltily, boisterously, and then he says goodbye.

On Sunday, he texts Maxence a place and a time and a question mark. He sees that the message is read several hours before Maxence responds with a single word: _dac._ _OK._

He arrives at their meeting place early, ignoring the sourness of his stomach and the nervousness that is making his palms sweat. School is a month from starting and the area around the Sorbonne campus is still dead: the only other person in Jozi Café is a woman bent over her laptop, a professor or a graduate student, perhaps, and she doesn’t spare him a second glance.

He’s been going to Jozi since filming wrapped on _Jamais contente_ , and the staff know him; they were kind to him, to the skinny, hyperactive kid filming his first big role in a movie. The proprietor made him his first flat white and taught him how to slurp his coffee, to taste the notes of fruit or chocolate. He knows Léna still comes back from time to time, too, but she’s in Marseille for the summer; there will be no chance of an encounter.

It’s going to be okay, he thinks. The stage is set. He’s ready. He has the whole staff of Jozi Café on his side, and David, too, and his mother. He’ll tell Maxence the truth: that he doesn’t have an answer, but he wants to do the right thing. He wants to take it slow. They’ll sit down and puzzle it out together.

With bossa nova playing softly overhead, he sits above his cappuccino and rehearses his speech, but the moment the bell jingles, and he sees Maxence standing there, it all flies out of his head.

Maxence is wearing a cream-colored shirt printed with botanicals: green leaves and deep red flowers. His hair is sun-bleached, a cap of gold. He’s more tanned than ever, and he seems thinner, too, almost wiry. Axel watches the pattern of light across the bones of his wrist as he reaches for the back of his chair.

“What’ll you have?” he blurts, trying to stall him. He knows, somehow, that when the meeting is over, the sight of Maxence’s back as he departs will be painful. He wants to drag things out. He wants Maxence to look at him and keep looking at him. “A cappuccino? Café au lait, espresso?”

 _Anything_ , he thinks, looking at Maxence, searching, trying to read his expression, _you can have anything you want._

Eventually, Maxence selects a tea. Axel watches him wait for it at the counter, watches him scratch at his ankle with his heavy black shoe. When the barista hands him his drink, he doesn’t smile. Cool and expressionless, he brings it back to the table, so smoothly he seems to be gliding, and then he doesn’t drink it; he sits across from Axel and stares at his hands.

He doesn’t know what to say, but he has to say something. He can’t let that poisonous silence come between them a second time. He finds himself talking about his mother, thinking about the warmth of her hand on his cheek.

Maxence meets his eyes briefly before looking down again.

Something swoops in his stomach. Desperately, he tells Maxence about the meeting with David and David-as-Cupid, winged and benevolent. He paints a hilarious picture. But Maxence doesn’t laugh; he doesn’t even smile.

“Is it going to be a problem?” Maxence asks.

“What?” he says, blinking. "Is what going to be..."

Maxence repeats himself, short and clipped. “What I said. What we did.”

“But Maxence,” Axel says, thinking about Senlis, about the stranger’s mild laughter in his voicemail, about the parade of girls and concerts and Maxence’s reluctance to return to Paris, “you didn’t mean it, did you?” And he repeats David’s words about people falling in love on set, more to himself than anything, trying on David’s heartiness on for size, trying to bolster himself.

Close up, he can see how blank Maxence looks. He’s bored, Axel thinks, still babbling; he doesn’t want to be here, he’s…

All of a sudden, Maxence is on his feet, not shouting, but not speaking quietly, either. Every word is vicious and brittle, cracking across Axel’s ears like a whip.

“Fuck,” he says. “You let me do it. You let me, you didn’t say a word.”

As Axel gapes at him, Maxence shifts backward, and the light from the window glitters in his eyes, and abruptly Axel understands that what he took for blankness was in fact blank terror, that all along Maxence has been on the verge of tears.

The realization grabs him by the throat and shakes him.

“Wait,” he gasps. “Wait, please.”

He doesn't even know what he says next, a wild, horrified eruption, the scattered remnants of his carefully planned explanation, so desperate to speak that he starts to stutter. But Maxence is already turning away.

Axel rises to intercept him, but his chair snags on the floor. He wrestles free, cursing the uneven planks and the forest they came from. Maxence crosses the café, moving faster and faster. He doesn’t look back. He yanks the door open and melts into the glare.

The bell tinkles. Axel stares into the empty space left behind and tries to breathe.

He knows now; he knows his answer. If Maxence leaves him, if he lets Maxence leave him, he’s going to die.

“Maxence!”

The light blinds him as he bursts onto the sidewalk. Maxence starts to run, a dark shape flitting along the pavement, and Axel chases him; he doesn’t know what else to do.

It’s like a nightmare: the distance between himself and Maxence is stretching; the ground is sinking and warping beneath him. He throws himself forward into the brilliant blue afternoon and catches Maxence by the arm and pulls, and then Maxence is looking down at him, his mouth trembling, his face wet, and Axel is going to die anyway, right here on this sidewalk, of shame.

“Oh, fucking fuck,” he says, “oh, no. Oh, don’t. _Shit_. I’m sorry, I said everything wrong.”

“Go away,” Maxence says.

“I’m not going to go away,” he says. “You’re upset—I’ve upset you.”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Maxence says. He wipes his eyes and drags in a deep, shaky breath, and Axel wonders if he should go to his knees. “We’re stuck. Everything is ruined. I’ll tell David I can’t do it anymore, I’ll drop out. Go away. Please go away. I’m begging you.”

He turns. With a panicked lurch, Axel grabs at his hand and seizes it.

“People are staring,” Maxence snaps.

“There’s no one here,” Axel says, but he doesn’t know; he hasn’t checked. There could be a crowd standing there with cameras for all he cares, an entire convention center’s worth of people.

Every last one of them can go to hell. But Maxence has to look at him.

“Maxence,” he says, “hey. Maxence!”

Slowly, Maxence lifts his head. His lips are pressed tightly together. His eyes are brimming with tears.

He’s going to lose his mind. “You love me that much,” he says, stupidly, and Maxence calls him an idiot and tries to pull away.

He doesn’t let go. He can’t. He has to keep Maxence tethered to him. He has to make Maxence understand. He tells Maxence everything, every thought, every fear, squeezing his hand like a clamp. Maxence tries to interrupt, tries to leave, and then he stops, and then he listens. Finally, Axel’s words run out; his story ends, and he trails off, and he waits.

“You want to try,” Maxence says. “Is that it?”

He apologizes again and again in a helpless rush.

He thinks of Charlie dancing by the Canal de l'Ourcq. The memory is already hazy, as softly drawn in his mind as _The Boulevard Montmartre at Night_ , black water and golden hair dissolving into dabs and dots.

He can’t see what lies ahead, where he will land, how far the current will take him. But he can feel Maxence’s hand, sticky with sweat, tensing and flexing under the repeated nervous circling of his fingers.

“Forgive me,” he begs. “Be patient with me.”

Maxence touches his own lips and asks a question.

His heart leaps.

And he answers: “Yes.”

And he closes his eyes.

And gently, Maxence cups his cheek, and soundlessly, Maxence kisses him—kisses him and kisses him and kisses him, until he is submerged.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you liked, please [reblog](https://hallo-catfish.tumblr.com/post/186599862989/the-blue-glass-zetaophiuchi-ryuujitsu-skam)!


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